“Lame and soulless”: Player exposes secret hack method to endlessly respawn shinies in “Pokémon Legends: Z-A”

A trick to make shiny monsters appear in Pokémon Legends: Z-A could be the biggest exploit since the MissingNo method. Last week, one X user went viral for demonstrating a way to force creatures to respawn over and over in a specific area, leaning on the fact that shiny Pokémon don’t despawn like the rest.

How to rapidly spawn shinies in Pokémon Legends: Z-A

A relatively unknown X user with the handle @ItachiVgc exposed this method on Oct. 16, gaining hundreds of thousands of views on both their instruction and video posts. Multiple commenters confirmed that the trick works.

If you’re looking to do some efficient shiny hunting, follow these steps:

Head to the top of the stairs leading to Wild Zone 3.
Hold down the L stick.
Watch as your character goes down the stairs and then back through the door over and over, or use an object to hold the L stick down while you do something else.
Wait for at least 20 minutes, then go shiny hunting in the area.

Reports indicate that this method works in multiple zones.

This X user even did some actual math to show how this method will result in nearly four shinies per hour, which don’t despawn even if you die.

“Using the stairs you can reset by holding down L stick,” they explained. “You can do this 22 times per minute. There’s 12 new responds [sic] everytime you go up or down the stairs. 22×60(minutes)x12(new responds) =15840 responds in 60 minutes. Shiny rate is 1/4096. 15840/4096 = 3.867 shinnies [sic] per hour.”

Some speculated that the developers may have intentionally created this exploit in order to make it easier to find the coveted shiny Pokémon. The game developers have yet to respond to the hype.

Some purists, however, are refusing to use it.

“So lame and soulless”

While plenty of Pokémon fans have already caught shinies with this exploit, some have rejected the idea entirely because it’s too easy or boring, claiming it takes all the fun out of what is supposed to bring a special challenge to the most dedicated players.

Besides, the game already has a Shiny Charm that increases the odds that these off-color creatures will appear.

“What a terribly dull way to shiny hunt,” complained @TheHolyOkapi.

“Something about this is just so lame and soulless,” wrote @1coja.

Meanwhile, @Kuyajin_z claimed that “shiny hunting lost its sauce.”

Those who aren’t so into the classic shiny hunting experience, however, are experiencing wild success.

User @hexelate reported that they “genuinely tried this for less than 60 seconds after calling someone to talk about it and LMAO?? PEAK!!!!”

Shiny Litleo, baby.